What retro, antique, or vintage items did your parents/guardians, grannies or keepers have in their homes when you were young?

Drip glaze and 60s coffee mugs.

A pair of these chairs in crushed gold velvet.

My granny had an old style record player cabinet that looked something like this.

My father had one like that, R3. We also had a piece like this above the sofa.

A pink plastic thing to hold bagels while you cut them.

I have this very early childhood memory of wallpaper in the kitchen of a house we lived in. It had astronauts and rockets and other Space Age imagery. It was the Kennedy era. I’ve actually tried looking for it online, no luck.

My mom and dad both smoked at least a pack per day, each. Mom mom was also interested in ceramics and took a class. We had numerous, large, glass and ceramic ashtrays in our house. We also had smaller ashtrays (the kind you find at bars in the old days) for smaller areas (next to phone, night stand, etc.).

My grandmother had a collection of purple bubble glass. I remember particularly a round cigarette lighter which was kind of cool. But my mom sold it all in a garage sale.

She also had lots and lots of steins of all sizes, which my mom still has.

Dark green sculptured carpet.

R6 my parents had the best floral wallpaper in the bathroom. I've looked. It's nowhere to be found

A great uncle (who was in his late fifties in the early1980s) had one of these. While it WAS an ashtray, I always played with the "trap door" mechanism which was activated by pressing a button at the edge.

We had a plastic cigarette dispenser in the shape of a horse. When you lifted its tail it would shit out a cigarette.

Now THAT is kitschy, R12.

I want one!

R13 I know all these things go? I used to love playing with it.

Oops “where do” all these things go. Where for example are my record albums? Where are my comic books? Mom!

My grandmother had a Bissel. It was fun to use it as a kid when we would visit her.

My grandmother actually had a little automatron of Charlie Weaver. When you turned it on, he would shake his shaker, lift his arm up and take a drink and his nose would turn red.

I didn’t think about it until this thread, but my parents haven’t smoked for decades R11, and yet still have at least 5 ashtrays in a drawer.

My father's 1972 Cadillac Sedan Deville had four cigarette lighters- two in the back and two in the front. That car was very comfortable but it only got about 8 miles per gallon in mixed driving.

I can still “smell” the inside of that stereo at R3 when the lid was lifted. That, together with the smell of the vinyl records, is burned in my memory.

My mother was into pretty cruddy Danish Design which meant my paternal grandparents treasures which ranged from Louis XV to American colonial, went to an uncle whose wife auctioned it for a fortune. I managed to get some Saarinen which wasn't in great shape and no pieces sold for above 5 figures.

We had this multi-tiered monkey pod monstrosity (lazy Susan). My aunt had one as well. Instead of the wooden pineapple (at the top tier), my aunt's had a wooden man sitting on a wooden donkey.

I still have this - it was a wedding present to my folks. When I moved out of the house I moved this out with me.

Fun facts: the hands are striped with radium so they glow in the dark. Such a gorgeous design though.

R23 You better enjoy it, those Radium Girls lost their lips, jaws and even lives for it to make that pretty glow.

[R24] I do enjoy looking at it, have had it for years and years, though I didn't know about the radium until recently. Did some google research and came across a very involved scientific investigation into the actual danger or harm it might pose from emitting radiation which is: negligible. It's not on my bedside table (it's on top of a china cabinet) and I don't plan to lick the hands at any time. I took it to be repaired once (it wasn't keeping time) and the clock guy never said a word about it, he had two of the same clocks in his shop. Then he died. (jk, don't know what happened to him.)

Beauty can be so dangerous, especially in home furnishings where you don't expect harm. I recall reading about turn-of-the-last-century wallpapers which featured beautiful shades of green, due to arsenic compounds used in their printing; sickening people who lived in the rooms with the wallpaper, because it rubbed off and flaked into dust.

Thanks for the reminder though.

R6 you got me curious so I went to look for something like you described, and I actually kind of like this one. They're reading a map!

R2. My parents had similar chairs. I love that design and look.

We had 4 sex swings at our house

My parents had a nearly complete dinner set of Royal Winton Grimwade "Summertime" chintz. I couldn't believe what it would sell for now when I checked Ebay. They also had a Victorian sideboard, and a heavy bronze, marble, and gilt clock that it takes two strong men to lift and that has to be rewound by opening a little hidden door in front. It is alleged to have once been owned by either Barnum or Bailey.

I'd sell them but my sister would murder me.

you are shocked it is so disvalued, fetching a couple hundred bucks on a good day?

me

My aunt had lots of large ceramic sculptures.

My grandparents had a mangle and a round 1930s washing machine. They also had a very cool rocket-shaped cannister vacuum, which still worked in the late1980s.

R30 - My parents probably bought that set in the 1920s for about £30. I saw a set of four dinner plates going for £300.

A full set for 12, with cups and saucers, dessert plates, a two handled serving platter, and a coffee pot, in mint condition without a single chip: I could get three thousand for it.

Keep up, mate.

Blonde coffee and end tables. They displayed a black ceramic panther on the coffee table.

Mom always had a box of Ayds diet candy in the cupboard. I'd eat one when I was desperate for candy, they were awful.

R29 I not-so-secretly like chintz as well. I looked up that set and it’s charming.

R33 Do you know, was it an Electrolux vacuum, they definitely were space age looking?

What about upright pianos? Not really vintage, but it seems like more people used to have them in their homes. (My family did have an upright piano in the house.)

Negro servants.

My aunt had one of these when I was a kid. I always wanted one. It wasn't retro back then.

We had a tether ball and pole in the backyard.

My parents replaced their cool griddle-in-the-middle gas stove with a tall electric stove with pull-out burners. They were all the rage in the neighborhood.

R38, I did an image search for rocket shaped vacuums and I'm pretty sure grandma's was a Kenmore Commander. It was teal and chrome.

We had a narrow all tile bathroom shower stall in a peachy pink very much like the one in the photo.

Mother always dragged us to church and I was very religious until age 12 when I'd have enough, but for some reason prior to my fall from grace I recited The Lord's Prayer while I showered.

A furry toilet seat

R45, that reminds me of the shag bathroom carpet fad. You could easily cut and lay it yourself.

R37 Ta! They specialised in chintz patterns. "Summertime" is one of their best known patterns.

It's not Meissen but it does exude a peculiarly endearingly English character.

I was amazed at how much some of the rarer patterns sell for.

A very nice woman in an antique shop that I queried about it, mentioned casually that when she got married, she couldn't make up her mind which china pattern she loved most. So she got 12 place settings, one each of her favourites, and she proole to dinner, let them pick their own place setting.

I swear this is true. I didn't dare arsk what she did about the silver.

^* when she had people to dinner

Not what the crazed autocorrect put in.

This salt cellar. I was always disgusted by it until I learned that it predated that symbol being associated with evil.

It was in my great-grandfather's butcher shop for 50+ years, then my grandmother's house. My mother has had it for the past 20 years.

My Grandma had one of these during the early 1970s. I used to get down on my knees to manipulate the pedal, fascinated that I was making something mechanical work even though I couldn't see it. I could hear and feel it. I was three.

The retro, antique, or vintage item my grannie had in her home was my grampa.

Did your grandma have a Sherpa toilet seat cover too?

R47 What a wonderful idea.

R53 - I couldn't imagine what the table must have looked like at a full dinner - sort of a flat fairground carousel . . . but the more I thought about it, the more intriguing the idea seemed. Alas, no one offered to buy the English eldergay brother a set of china for HIS home!

My grandmother had an old-fashioned brocade horse-hair sofa that I hated. When I was little I would sit on it and slide right off. It was so slippery I couldn't stick.

A washer with a mangle on top.

R50 my grandmother taught me how to sew on a pedal machine. In the 70s. It was fun and not very difficult and you had a lot of control.

[quote]My grandmother had an old-fashioned brocade horse-hair sofa that I hated.

While my grandmother had an old-fashioned whores'-hair sofa that [italic]I[/italic] hated!